Lessons from Disney part 3 – MAGIC KINGDOM

Today, we went to Magic Kingdom. It was Saturday, so we decided to make the most of it and arrive at 8 am. There was almost no one there! We were able to ride Aladdin carpet ride, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain, the Haunted Mansion (the scariest part was before the ride started with the ghosts taLking about the ride) and Peter Pan all in an hour.

Then we had breakfast in Belle’s castle, Be Our Guest. It was beautiful and a great place to sit, but honestly the food wasn’t that great. The kids ordered crepes and none of them liked it. The standard eggs. bacon, sausage, and eggs were fine and I had a poached egg sandwich that I enjoyed. The best part was that it counted as a quick meal. There were no characters but this fan girl was super happy with the existence.

Then we walked through the Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house. My dad was a camp director for 30 years and has always wanted to recreate something similar.

After that we used two more fast passes, for the Pirates of the Caribbean (again) and Space Mountain. Both rides were fun but not amazing.

The dance parade goes through the main circle and is super fun! They picked a great song that makes everyone want to dance along. The floats include Chip and Dale, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde from zootopia, and Phineas and Ferb.

In the afternoon we decided to return to the hotel to let the kids swim and relax. It is not what I would recommend but it was right for my family.

We returned for dinner at the Crystal Palace and meet Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet. Eeyore was also there but we were ready to move on (awww poor Eeyore). Afterwards, we stumbled across Once Upon a Time and it was seriously the best part of magic kingdom. It is a show projected onto the main castle and tells all the classic Disney stories. The way they project the images on the castle completely transforms over and over. When you think it is over, it isn’t and more awesomeness continues! I cannot fully express how amazing it is.

Then we chose to ride Buzz light year again. The Speed Races was the only ride I would say was really awful. The go carts were extremely slow and had a bumper in the middle so you couldn’t change lanes or really race. A child would have to be very young and never ridden a go cart before to enjoy this experience.

When preparing for the fireworks we assumed as long as we had a good view of the castle then we would have a good view of the fireworks. Boy were we very, very wrong! Most of the fireworks were unseen and we moved to get a better view but still it wasn’t very good. Note the time for the show because it changes whether on weekdays or weekend.

We heard that the park would empty after the fireworks, and that was true for kids ride but not so for adult rides. We tried to do the Dwarf Mine ride, but so did everyone else and after being at the park for 14 hours (minus 2 hours when we went back to the hotel) we didn’t want to wait another 75 min for another ride. Calling it a night was the right move. In hindsight, we should have left after the Once Upon a Time light show or asked where to be for the fireworks.

Compared to Epcot and Magic Kingdom, we all enjoyed Epcot more. Magic Kingdom met most of my expectations, where Epcot exceeded them every single show!

What we learned:

1. Go in the morning! I might have already said this but it is worth repeating. I can’t believe how much we were able to do.

2. The rides are good for nostalgic reasons, but not overly impressive. There was not one ride that I would think is worth an hour wait, including space mountain, even though that or Buzz was my favorite.

3. Even with a two hour break I still took over 27,000 steps. This park had better places to sit and I did not feel as worn out as I did from Epcot. Take advantage of what is near you. We did much less back tracking and were more efficient with our time.

4. The Once Upon a Time light show is crazy amazing! Do everything you can to schedule it into your visit. We caught half of the parade during the afternoon and it was very impressive, I’m sure the whole thing is worth seeing. The parade lover in the family teared up it being so beautiful.

5. For the fireworks make sure you are in FRONT of the castle! (the same is true for Once Upon a Time) Being at the back of the.castle we saw almost nothing. Crazy but true.